


Renegade

by idleflower



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Abusive Parents, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 18:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2035596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idleflower/pseuds/idleflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How things might have gone, if Lady Holdless Thella were written as a more sympathetic character.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Renegade

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read either 'The Girl Who Heard Dragons' or 'The Renegades of Pern', this may be hard to follow. On the other hand, I'm pretty obviously changing a few things from canon...

Aramina could hear her parents arguing in hushed voices as they worked, side by side, to pack the family's belongings for transport.

"And winter coming!" her mother Barla moaned, winding the thin fabric of a summer tunic around her second-best cooking pan. "How will we survive?"

"We'll survive, or we'll die with dignity." her father growled. "Either way, we must leave, tonight. I won't let my family be caught up in the schemes of that vindictive, unnatural woman."

Aramina remembered when her father had called her an 'unnatural child', back before Dowell had believed her about being able to hear the dragons. He'd switched her then, with a thin branch set aside from a tree whose wood he intended to carve, but she had refused to change her story no matter how she cried. It didn't matter how much it hurt, when you knew a thing was true. 

"'Lady' Thella indeed," Dowell continued, shaking his head. "Either of our dray beasts would make a better lady than that creature. No honor, no sense of tradition, none of the skills of a woman at all, and so hard-faced that no man would have her."

Aramina knew that her father had mistaken Thella for a man, at first, as he was meant to. Therad had appeared as a small-holder from Keroon, a tall and lean young fellow with strong hands and a ready purse at his hip. Not one of Pern's elite, perhaps, but far removed from the status of a holdless family forced to camp together in an alcove within Igen caverns. Such a man could stride with confidence into the midst of a family meal and offer Dowell a commission with no preamble. Any woman so bold would have been thought mad and chased away before she could curse the children or upset the stew.

But Thella _was_ a woman, and Aramina had been the first to see it. The holder had been standing with Aramina's father, bent over a set of sketches for the wooden chairs 'he' was commissioning, when Aramina returned to the family alcove with a net full of shellfish. Therad looked up at her approach, and their eyes met, each reflecting in the other. That day, for the first time, Aramina recognised that a kind of beauty existed in the world beyond her mother's soft curves and shining hair.

"What about the wood?" Barla asked, soft again, trying not to draw the attention of the neighbors. "The work was paid for..."

"You can't steal from a thief," Dowell said. "That wood was filched from Igen's holdings, sure enough, and never Thella's to start with. We'll take the chairs and sell them on our way."

Barla stacked wooden cups together. "But to cross the Telgar plains when Thread might fall..."

Dowell smiled. "We'll be fine. Aramina can listen for the dragons and warn us of any danger coming. That's what Thella wanted her for, sure enough. Our treasure. And to think I ever complained that our firstborn was female."

Aramina noted that her father made no apology to _her_ for such a thought. It was natural for a father to want a son, wasn't it?

Her mother sighed and brushed her hands on her clothing. "I'm sure you know what's best... I'm only worried for the children."

"We're doing this for them." Dowell paused and turned to his wife, catching her hand in his. "Back in Ruatha, we can claim our old lands again. The children will have a solid home and an inheritance, instead of begging for charity from the Lord and Lady of Igen and being forced to mix with this rabble... Thella's not the only outlaw in these caverns. Every time I take my eyes off you, I fear what some man might try to do."

Aramina knew that her family had been forced to flee their home in Ruatha when the men of Lord Fax took a liking to her then-pregnant mother. It was a terrible story, and explained some of her father's protectiveness, but she did not see not how it made her family so much better than all the other holdless. They'd all been turned out of their homes one way or another.

Lady Thella, it was said, had run into the hills because she refused to accept her brother as Lord Holder when she thought the right should have been hers. Instead, she set out to build and people her own hold. Aramina would have thought it all a ridiculous legend if she hadn't actually met the woman. No gently-raised hold-daughter would buck all convention and attempt to become master of her own fate... except for Thella.

She remembered the late-night confrontation, after she had seen through Therad's disguise and challenged him - her - to explain herself. The woman had smiled at Aramina, hazel eyes flashing. "Because I dare. Do you?"

"... a Lord Holder's daughter, to a common criminal," her father said, and Aramina turned her thoughts back to the current conversation. "Stealing supplies from hard-working people. Trying to lure our daughter away. They ought to stake her out for Thread!"

"Shh!" Barla looked back and forth rapidly. "You'll upset the children. They shouldn't know."

"Rouse them," he said gruffly. "Get them packing. We have to be ready to move out soon."

It was true, Aramina thought. Thella was a thief. She slipped into Holds and made off with money, food, goods, anything she could carry, and took it away to feed her own people, in their home in the hills. And it was true, more than true, that she wanted Aramina to join them there. She remembered all the details that she hadn't told her parents, the whispered promises of a life that was wild and free, the feel of those strong fingers against her own sunbrowned skin...

"Mina!" her mother snapped. "Stop daydreaming! Do you have all of your belts? Have you loaned anything away?"

"I..." All of a sudden, it was her turn to speak, and she didn't know what to say. "I left a shoe..."

"Well, go and fetch it, then!" Barla placed her hands on Aramina's shoulders, shaking them gently. "It's very important. Tonight, everything will change. Do you understand?"

And she did. Just not in the way that her mother would have wanted. 

"I'll go," Aramina said. "Don't worry about me." And then, after she'd walked away, after she was sure that her parents could no longer hear her, she added, "... Goodbye."

It didn't matter how much it hurt, when you knew a thing was true.

**Author's Note:**

> Quite a lot of Dowell being an ass is canon from one story or the other. It always bothered me that they took off in the middle of making Thella's chairs, with no explanation, and yet even when she chases them as thieves everyone can apparently see 'Designated Villain' written on her and refuses to help. Then she goes completely insane and loses all believable motivation whatsoever. It was a stupid story.


End file.
